The Book Room

Newmarket Press annouced that it has submitted the word "phallographics" for inclusion in the Oxford English Dictionary. Editors at Newmarket coined the term to describe the art featured throughout the newly published Superbad: The Drawings (96 pages, $15), a tie-in to last year's hit teen sex comedy "Superbad."

For those who may not have seen the movie, the character of Seth, as a grade-schooler, had a compulsive habit of drawing penises in various and outrageous situations, in a notebook. You get to seem them all in the end credits. As much as it pains me to admit it, they're sickeningly funny.

The book also includes a foreword by "Superbad" screenwriters Seth Rogen & Evan Goldberg, who explain how they recruited Evan's brother David Goldberg (a lawyer in Vancouver, Canada) to create the illustrations for the film.

And in case you're wondering, the definition of the new word is as follows:

phal*lo*graph*ics (fa'lo graf'iks), n. The pictorial representation of a phallus, or a depiction relating to or resembling a phallus.

Posted by Teresa Budasi at 11:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

How to describe The Encyclopedia of Immaturity (Klutz Press, 410 pages, $19.95). First of all, the title, the heft and the cover photo of the "Mona Lisa" with a Sharpie-drawn mustache and glasses, and an arrow through her head, drew me to it...

Continue reading "The art of doughnut bouncing" »

Posted by Teresa Budasi at 07:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Many a colorful character passed through the motel my grandparents ran when I was a kid, but none more colorful than Terry Twaddle and Cotton Beanfang. I never met these gentleman but I knew their names. I remember the adults in my family being quite amused by the unusual monikers, even going so far as to make up a song about the two "lonely rovers."

Retired editor Larry Ashmead, who spent his career in book publishing, loves funny names, too, and he's been "collecting" them for most of his life. So, you could say his life's work now lies between the pages of Bertha Venation: And Hundreds of Other Funny Names of Real People (Harper, 152 pages, $14.95)...

Continue reading "What's in a name?" »

Posted by Teresa Budasi at 08:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Anyone ever ask you that question, "If you could have a conversation with anyone in history, who would it be?" Author Michael A. Stusser asked himself that question and went one step further, conducting "interviews" with the likes of Abraham Lincoln, J. Edgar Hoover, Vincent van Gogh, Emily Dickinson, Cleopatra and Confucious, to name a few.

Stusser is a Seattle-based writer and game inventor (The Doonesbury Game, Hear Me Out) whose work frequently appears in Mental Floss magazine — so you know the guy's got a pretty good albeit odd sense of humor. Now his Dead Guy Interviews are collected in paperback, The Dead Guy Interviews: Conversations With 45 of the Most Accomplished, Notorious, and Deceased Personalities in History (Penguin, 291 pages, $14).

Here's some excerpts from a few "interviews" that cracked me up ...

Continue reading "Channeling Cleopatra and Mussolini" »

Posted by Teresa Budasi at 07:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Any woman who's married or been married, or has/had a boyfriend — or a father, brother or male roommate for that matter — will read Stephen Fried's Husbandry: Sex, Love & Dirty Laundry — Inside the Minds of Married Men (Bantam, 177 pages, $18) and be reminded of every annoyance that goes along with such living arrangements.

It's a good thing Fried has a self-deprecating tone and a sense of humor because that's what makes this book accessible to both genders. Men will read, laugh and nod in agreement at Fried's observations culled from his own life...

Continue reading "The male mind" »

Posted by Teresa Budasi at 08:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)